History of John Backus's functional programming project [draft]

?\C- ?\C-f ?\C- ?\C-s ?\] ?\C-b ?\C-w ?\C-y ?\C-r ?\[ ?\C- ? ?\C-s ?\] ?\C- ?])--> History of John Backus's functional programming project ***** DRAFT ***** Paul McJones paul@mcjones.org https://mcjones.org/dustydecks Last modified 18 July 2026 Abstract John Backus explored a sequence of applicative, functional and function-level languages starting before 1969 and continuing until he retired in 1991. The goal of this project is to preserve the surviving materials from this research and to put th